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What is Common Core

TALKING WITH PARENTS ABOUT COMMON CORE

Talking With Parents About Common Core

What is Common Core?

Our students [will soon be taking/are now taking/just took] the Smarter Balanced Assessments, the tests that measure learning under Common Core. Common Core is a set of academic standards, or learning goals, for math and English that define what our students should know and be able to do at the end of each school year. For example, by the end of third grade, our kids should be able to measure and estimate weights of liquid and solve word problems using those quantities. You can read the standards here.

Before we started using them in our school, the Common Core Standards were developed by a group of teachers, state governors and education leaders from 48 states. This group first came together in 2009 to establish learning goals based on education research and existing best practices with a proven track record of student success. State participation in the development process was voluntary, and so was the decision to adopt the standards here in California in 2010. Read more here.

Why is the math homework different now?

You may have noticed changes in your child’s homework. The updated standards in both areas—math and English—emphasize critical thinking. For math, this means many homework problems now have two parts: the solution to the problem, and a section where your child is asked to explain how they got their answers. Go here for a side-by-side comparison of examples of updated math questions with the old style of homework. You can find Common Core math resources for parents here.